Authors
Debbie Epstein, Deborah Lynn Steinberg
Publication date
1998/1/1
Journal
Women's Studies International Forum
Volume
21
Issue
1
Pages
77-94
Publisher
Pergamon
Description
This paper explores several versions of the “American Dream,” which frame, and are produced within, the Oprah Winfrey Show. We begin by examining the conventional narrative of rags to riches, freedom and opportunity, mom, baseball, and apple pie most commonly associated with the American Dream and most graphically taken up as a liberal politics within the text of the Show. We then go on to consider the alternative American Dreams—therapy version, family version, female version, and civil rights version. We explore the ways in which these differing Dreams can, on the one hand, reveal the underside, the betrayal, the failures to deliver of the conventional Dream, and yet, on the other hand, work precisely to recuperate it.
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